This was taken on our LAST day of traveling to Philly, but this is pretty much our view for the last 4 states...We arrived at the Mission office at noon and were greeted quite warmly by the elders and mission couple working there.  Soon President and Sister Anderson came to greet us.  They welcomed us with hugs and a big bag of goodies--fresh fruit, red vines, and some shower scrub.  We instantly loved them.  We met with them for about 30 minutes and found that we will be staying close to the mission office.  It seems that the office is very busy and the couple assigned cannot handle everything, so they assigned a companionship of elders to be stationed there.  They are now going back out in the field before they return home and the couple coming will not be here til the end of Oct., so we were asked to help out in the mission office until then.  Corry is working on cars and referrals and I am working on membership records and commissary.

We like it.  Corry has also been asked to develop the program to go with the just received mental health handbook for missionaries.  It arrived one day before us and Corry is preparing its implementation.  The mission office is very busy.  We did not realize all that has to go on there in order to assure that the missionaries can accomplish their important work, have apartments, cars, supplies, and keep records of it all.

Our apartment and one of the Sister missionaries who cleaned it.  It was very hot and humid that day and we were so very grateful that they cleaned the apartment for us.  Apparently the Elders had not left it very clean.. We are located on the top floor and by the end of the day unloading our car and getting groceries we had each done at least 10 trips and were very sore and hot and tired.

This is what we saw upon walking in to the apartment.  Very clean and not much in the way of furniture.  I  had to purchase a few things in order to have things to eat on and with and prepare food.

These are our papa and mama chairs.  We did have to rearrange everything because the actual apartment is old and on the wall with the table there were no plugs for the computer.  We worked Thursday and Friday at the mission office.  Elder Bowen of the 70 arrived the same day as us and that meant that there were meetings all afternoon from Thursday until Saturday.  We got to meet lots of missionaries and even a few that sounded familiar.  Dave and Tom--remember Gwen Fennell--I think she taught math at East Minico Jr. High.  Anyway, her grandson is here serving a mission.  He is 6'10"!  So we made it through the week.  We do have AC in our apartment and on Saturday we finally figured out how to turn it down.  Meanwhile we have slept with quilts and socks!

Corry's brother, Lindsay and his wife, Chris, came to see us on Saturday, 9/14/13.  Chris is doing work in Egg Harbor, NJ--part of our mission.  So they came over and we visited President Anderson's recommended Philly Cheese steak place.  President Anderson used to live in NJ and commute to Philly in his early career.  He mentioned this place to us and he liked it so well that even when he left the area he would have them Fed-Ex a cheese steak to him.  He was right--it was sooooooo good!  We will surely return.

So what Corry (Elder Jones) is holding is 1/2 of the sandwich.  It measures 4"thick and 10 " long, so we split one.  Later in the day we enjoyed another local favorite, "Rita's Custard".  It is Italian Ice layered with custard.  Really good!  We will try that again too.  It was a good, short, week #1.